Deep space software upgrade for Hera’s asteroid visit

Operating across 140 million km of space, the control team for ESA’s Hera mission have succeeded in upgrading the software running the spacecraft, leaving it ready to explore the distant Dimorphos and Didymos asteroids this autumn. Overseeing Hera from ESOC's Interplanetary Control Room Imagine being tasked to install new software onto a multi-million-euro computer, sight unseen. You don’t get to touch the hardware in question because it is already busy overseeing a spacecraft in deep space, in onward motion at more than 12 km per second.Instead you send instructions by text message, relayed via 35-m diameter communication antennas directed at precisely the right patch of sky, working around a nearly eight-minute one-way signal delay due to the inherent distance involved.

Source: esa.int